Pep Guardiola has opened up about what he strives for from his career (Image: Getty)

The Spaniard has won 24 major trophies with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City and is expected to win many more during his spell at the Etihad.

But the self-confessed perfectionist says he will never sacrifice his football philosophy just to win titles – he wants people to remember the beauty and artistry of his teams.

“Statistics and numbers are nice,” he said, “but numbers are not passion. It does not give you something. It is better to say after 10 years I remember this final and how well we played, to remember the way we have done it.

“Titles are important of course, and they have helped me have jobs and to keep working on my passion.

When the people say, ‘What do you want?’ To be loved.

Pep Guardiola

“But I think all the managers, we are happy with our old players, when we can laugh and hug and have a good relation. Everyone loves to be loved, it is the secret of our lives.

“I will be Mancunian for the rest of my life. I will be a Manchester City fan and it will be impossible to train another team like Manchester City in England because I feel love from the people here.

“When the people say, ‘What do you want?’ To be loved. The most nice thing is when you feel good with the other people.”

Guardiola is a disciple of Dutch legend Johan Cruyff who he played for in Barcelona’s ‘dream team’ of the late 1980s and early 90s that won the European Cup at Wembley in 1992.

The Premier League was Pep Guardiola’s seventh league title (Image: Getty)

He trains with the same intensity and applies the same demands on his players Cruyff did at the Nou Camp – even though he admits that it got too much for him at times and he needed a break from a man regarded as one of the world’s greatest players and managers.

“The way he saw football is totally different; he had a lot of power in that way,” he added. “Obsessive, demanding, stressful. He was like a brutal father. He was so rough, so tough – you cannot imagine.

“Nothing was easy, and there was a time when I could not stay with him any more, but he was fair. He helped me to love this game, to love football, and to love it you have to understand it.

“He gave us secrets, because they were things nobody else saw. I am not such a religious guy – I grew up going to church but I don’t believe too much – so I don’t talk to him [Cruyff], but I always remember.

“Maybe I would like to have faith to believe he is there watching us. Sometimes I think maybe it’s happened.”

Guardiola differs from hard-man Cruyff in the sense he admits he is a more sensitive and emotional man and gets too close to his players at time.

“I’m not shy to say how I love my people,” he said. “Maybe the opposite, maybe I say too many times how I love them. In that I feel so Latin – my face or my body language always expresses perfectly what I feel in that moment, I am not escaping or hiding.

“With my players, sometimes I think many times, ‘Don’t do that Pep’. Even now I don’t know if I should show too much love because sometimes you suffer more if you get too close to your players.

Pep Guardiola says he has an affinity with the Man City fans (Image: Getty)

“But infootballthe passion is on the field. Sometimes I need to hug them, I don’t need to talk to them. People forget we are human beings. People believe we are like ice, cold, a machine. That is far away from who we really are.”

Guardiola loved Cruyff’s innovative coaching and tactical methods and says managers should always be searching for new ways.

“Humanity goes forward because people don’t accept what the reality is and try to discover new things.

“If you don’t try to be creative and don’t ask why do we have to do that, why not another way, then humanity doesn’t exist any more. These kind of people are necessary to make humanity much better.

Pep Guardiola is a disciple of the Johan Cruyff school of management (Image: Getty)

“Football is nice because what works today doesn’t work tomorrow. Sometimes you are doing something well and you say, ‘OK, if we continue that way it will start to go bad’. When you see the signals, you have the feelings, you have to do something different.

“All managers, we make a lot of decisions because of feelings. We have a lot of information about the opponents you meet, you put in the brain, but you have to live the feelings.”

Pep Guardiola was speaking in an exclusive interview with Spanish journalist Guillem Balague for BBC Radio Five.